Madness and frenzy of marble

One say that the marbble talks, understands and can make you crazy. The willing of touching it, possessing it and make it and the bend can become an iressitible impulsion. To realize that you have to go to Carraren small city in >Tosabyn at the foot of the apuanes alps, a few kilometers north of Pise.There, and in the surrouding villages, one can only see, speak and think marbble. The passion stone seeps insidiously that you also air loaded air marble dust that you breath there. The roads leading to the squarries writhe between ash and chestnut like tongues petrified lined with blocks that seem forsaken. Every where, sawmills, disorderly, crowded; sweet whitish torrents and when you see a house, nestled between two cyprus trees, you can see on the front, ocher and red, the doorways and windows are solid marble. As the steles in the cimeteries, the top of the tables in the cafés and the pavement of the squares.

It is here, on Mount Altissimo above Seravezza, that Michel Angelo, used to come to choose his blocks of raw marble. His supposed presence has helped Carrare to become one of the first centers for sculptors. They might be up to 200 who live in the dust of the marbre which becomes embedded in the pores of their skin and benefit from the equipment needed for working marbble that the cooperative or the various workshops provide them.

For National Geographic Magazine